Top of the Morning

It's been nearly two years since this space began writing about possible antitrust actions against big tech, which was mostly greeted by two different types of reader replies:

Textual eye-rolls, usually with a subtext about how politicians don't have enough bipartisan spine.

Anger, suggesting Axios has latent hostility toward big tech and was creating controversy for the sake of clicks.

Since then, we've had the AT&T/Time Warner fight, lots of new data revelations about companies like Facebook, White House potshots at Amazon, and Democratic presidential candidates who've realized that corporate economic inequality is a good political stand-in for personal economic inequality.

Now we have legislative and regulatory inquiries into big tech platforms, including yesterday's House Judiciary Committee announcement that it will investigate possible monopolistic practices.

Three big-picture items:

Does this stay limited to one industry? There's been some talk of a tech-specific Glass-Steagall Act, but consensus is forming that American antitrust law needs a much more inclusive refresh. Consumer-focused tech is hardly the only U.S. industry with just a few dominant players.

Does this become an opportunity for startups? Even if big platforms like Amazon and Google aren't broken up, a big antitrust fight could prove unavoidably distracting — just like it once was for Microsoft.

Does this become a new risk factor for "unicorns" seeking to IPO? These companies aren't really startups anymore, often being valued by public markets in the tens of billions of dollars, and it's possible that new lines could be drawn through their existing "big tech" businesses.

The bottom line: Two years feels like forever ago, but chances are that these issues still won't be fully resolved in two years from now.

Also...

•Credit concerns: Craig Phillips, former Wall Streeter and current counselor to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, took to LinkedIn over the weekend:

"FSOC and all of its member agencies are vigilant in monitoring systemic risks, including the non-financial corporate debt market. Leveraged loans are $1.2 trillion of a total corporate debt market of over $9 trillion — so significant but not overwhelmingly so. We are watching performance, rating trends, coverage and covenant trends carefully."

The BFD

Source: Giphy

FTD (Nasdaq: FTD), the Illinois-based flower delivery network, yesterday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and agreed to sell its North America and Latin America businesses (including ProFlowers) to Nexus Capital Management for $95 million. It also will sell its UK-based Interflora unit to The Wonderful Co. for $59.5 million and signed letters of intent to sell its Personal Creations and Shari’s Berries businesses to undisclosed buyers.

Why it's the BFD: Because this is really about an earlier, much-hyped deal gone bad. FTD in 2014 paid $430 million to buy ProFlowers, so it could move big into non-floral gifting and increase its share of the e-commerce consumer flowers business from 8% to 18%. But it struggled to service the merger's $120 million in debt, ultimately unable to make payments due this past weekend.

Bottom line: "The deep-rooted middleman for the florist industry traces its lineage to 1910, when it started as a network of U.S. florists who used telegraph communication to trade out-of-town orders, according to the court declaration.It operated as a not-for-profit until 1994, when it was acquired by Perry Capital." — Jeremy Hill, Bloomberg

•AdHawk, a New York-based digital marketing startup focused on SMEs, raised $13 million in Series B funding. Entrée Capital led and was joined by Accomplice and Table Management. http://axios.link/7VVA

•Onna, a Barcelona-based data centralization startup, raised $11 million in Series A funding. Dawn Capital led, and was joined by Dropbox, the Slack Fund, and return backer Nauta Capital. http://axios.link/LmkQ

•AnyRoad, a San Francisco-based experience relationship management startup, raised $9.2 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led, and was joined by seed backers Rally Ventures and Precursor Ventures. www.anyroad.com

•Fluree, a Winston-Salem, N.C.-based developer of a blockchain-based data management platform, raised $4.7 million in seed funding led by Rise of the Rest. http://axios.link/BucW

•Tink, a Swedish open-banking platform, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from PayPal. It previously raised around $80 million from firms like Sunstone Capital and Insight Partners. http://axios.link/iqMU

🚑 WindRose Health Investors completed an equity recap of Lykan Bioscience, a Hopkinton, Mass.-based provider of production and logistics solutions for life sciences companies focused on cell and gene therapies. www.lykanbio.com

Public Offerings

•Fiverr, an Israel-based freelance work marketplace, set IPO terms to 5.3 million shares at $18-$20. It would have a fully-diluted market value of $635 million, were it to price in the middle, and plans to trade on the NYSE (FVRR) with JP Morgan as lead underwriter. The company reports a $36 million net loss on $75.5 million in revenue for 2018 and had raised around $110 million in VC funding from Bessemer Venture Partners (14.9% pre-IPO stake), Accel (12.1%), Square Peg Capital (11.3%), Qumra Capital (7%) and ION Crossover Partners (5.9%). http://axios.link/C1B6

🚑 Inhibrx, a La Jolla, Calif.-based developer of biologic immunotherapeutics, filed for a $75 million IPO. It plans to trade on the Nasdaq (INBX) with Evercore ISI as lead underwriter, and has raised over $80 million from firms like RA Capital and Viking Global Investors. http://axios.link/A3tg

•Volkswagen said it plans to float its Traton trucks unit on both the Frankfurt and Nasdaq Stockholm exchanges. http://axios.link/NYKg